Green Algae and Bubble Gum Wars (10 page)

“Carbon emissions? What's that?”

Betsy smiled and leaned back in her chair. She loved being asked to explain things. “Well, you see, Avery, producing energy from fossil fuels releases CO
₂
, you know, carbon dioxide, into the air—”

“And that factory is going to use a ton of energy!” Avery shouted, without bothering to listen to the rest of what Betsy was saying. She was getting more pumped about the issue by the second.

“That's not really what I was going to say—” Betsy started.

Katani shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “Actually…” she began. “Oh, never mind.”

“What?” Avery asked.

Katani shrugged, “Well, it's just that, maybe this factory isn't necessarily a bad thing. I mean, it's bringing business to the city. They've even hired my dad to do some work, and he didn't mention anything about the factory being a big polluter. He thinks it could really help out the local economy.”

“Economy-shmonomy!” Avery cried. “All those wrappers mean fewer trees to absorb some of the CO
₂
. More commuters equals more CO
₂
in the air!” She jumped out of her chair and shouted, “Stop the factory!” while pumping one fist into the air.

Several kids from the next table over turned around to see who was rallying for the environment in the middle of the cafeteria. The BSG looked at Avery in surprise. “Are you turning into me?” Maeve asked. “Because that speech was definitely stage-worthy, Avery.”

“I think you're taking this a little too far,” the sensible Charlotte commented.

I couldn't agree more,
Katani thought. “People need to work so they can eat,” she told Avery, feeling the blood rise to her face.

Lucky for everyone, the final lunch bell sounded. Maeve had never felt so relieved for her social time to be over. The BSG shuffled out, feeling less on the same environmental page at the end of lunch than they had at the beginning. As for Maeve, she was feeling anxious.
Science is too hard,
she thought.
Way too hard.

Tru Blu Goo

As the day went on, things went from bad to worse. Before science class began, Avery watched kids surround Kiki, Joline, and Anna, dying to get their paws on the brand new Tru Blu Gum. “I heard that this is the only gum that Jake Axle chews!” Samantha Simmons gushed at Kiki.

“It's true,” Kiki confirmed. “He says it helps him sing better.”

“Oh, my
gosh
that is
so cool
!” Samantha cried, eagerly munching her gum.

Avery rolled her eyes, but she couldn't help feeling a tad jealous. Just a couple days ago, everyone had been crowded around
her,
getting pumped about the Green Machine. Now they were all into…blue bubble gum? “This is unbelievable! Everyone thinks Kiki Underwood is soooo cool just because she gives out a few pieces of free gum. Totally lame. Who cares about Tru Blu Goo, or whatever it's called? We gotta get people to focus on what's really important—saving this planet!”

“Don't sweat it, Avery,” said Isabel, trying to cheer her
friend up. “This gum thing is only a fad. And we all know that fads don't stick for long.”

“Ew!” Charlotte suddenly screeched. “There's something on me!” Charlotte tried to stand, but her jeans were glued to her seat.

Avery scuttled over to inspect. “Gross! It's Tru Blu Gum, Char. Someone left it on your chair.”

Charlotte turned beet red, experiencing another one of her infamous moments of public humiliation. She tried to pry the sticky goop off her jeans, but it just wouldn't give. “I can't believe this.” She gulped. “And these pants are brand new.”

“I can put a cool patch over the gum spot if you want,” Katani offered.

“Thanks,” replied Charlotte. “That might help, I guess.”

Later in class, Chelsea Briggs found a piece of Tru Blu sticking to the elbow of her jacket. “Gross!” she whispered to Isabel, who very much agreed. “This stuff is super sticky. If I find the gum leprechaun that stuck this on me, there's going to be trouble.”

“I'm with you, Chels,” Isabel whispered back. “But the QOM handed out free samples to
every
one, so it's probably
every
where! Double ew.”

When the bell rang at the end of class, Avery was the first kid out of her seat and dashing toward the hallway. But halfway out the door, she was stopped dead in her tracks. One of her cherished, bright orange sneakers—the ones she had paid for herself with all the money she earned walking dogs in the neighborhood last summer—was stuck fast to the tiled floor of the science room.

The BSG stood frozen in a semi-circle in front of her,
terrified that Avery might morph into a cannonball and go charging straight for Kiki.

“Now, Ave,” Charlotte said in her most soothing voice, “don't get mad…”

Avery's response was even more intense than the girls could have predicted. “Mad? Mad?” Avery squeaked in a loud, tight voice. “Oh, I'm not mad. This is
no
time to get mad…it's time to get
even
.” Avery pointed at her sneaker and the disgusting elastic strip of gum stretching up and down as she raised and lowered her foot. “This, my friends, is war!” she declared. And with that pronouncement, Avery charged down the hall.

Charlotte glanced at the rest of the BSG. “Um, should we be worried here?”

Maeve shrugged. “I don't know. It's Avery, and you know how she gets. I mean this could be a good thing. If she's going to be an environmental warrior, maybe she needs to power up. Isn't that what the Green Machine is all about?”

Her friends weakly nodded, but they were still uncertain. What if the Green Machine got clobbered by…the
Blue
Machine?

I
'm gonna go make sure she doesn't try to make a bubble the size of Texas and blow it at Kiki's face,” Isabel decided.

“Good idea!” Charlotte agreed.

“I gotta go, anyway,” said Maeve, following Isabel and Charlotte into the hall. “I have a tutoring session with Matt in an hour. You coming, Katani?” Maeve called behind her.

Katani shuffled her feet and glanced back into the empty classroom where Mr. Moore sat at his desk grading papers. “I just have to ask Mr. Moore a quick question. You guys go ahead. I'll catch up later.”

She was secretly thrilled to have the chance to pick Mr. Moore's brain about her science fair project. She would have explained this to the BSG, but she had a feeling that sometimes her super-intense study habits stressed out her BFFs…especially Maeve.

Mr. Moore was exactly one inch shorter than Katani with very short brown hair and a big-time love of plaid, short-sleeved shirts, and cows. The entire room was decorated with
cow stuff, from the paper towel dispenser to the frames on the pictures on Mr. Moore's desk. Thankfully, he did not let his cow obsession interfere with his other love—science—of which he was a good and very patient instructor.

“Hello, Katani. Is there something I can help you with?”

“Yes. Mr. Moore, I've been doing a lot of thinking about my science fair project, and I had a few concerns.”

Mr. Moore looked puzzled. “My, Katani! Your grades this semester have been stellar. I'm sure you have absolutely nothing to worry about.”

Katani sighed. How was it that even her teachers didn't understand her drive to succeed? “Oh, it's not my grade I'm worried about, Mr. Moore. I mean, I know that if I work really hard, I can do fine and everything. It's just that, well, I was thinking about doing a project about electricity, right? But now the theme of the science fair is the environment…which obviously I'm totally cool with. I mean, my friends and I were sort of the ones who started the whole environment theme in the first place…”

Mr. Moore closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. “Sorry, Katani…I'm not following.”

“Well, I started off wanting to do something about electricity—'cause my dad's an electrician—but then my dad told me all this stuff about alternative energy that sounded really cool. But my friend Charlotte is already doing solar energy…so now I just don't know what to do!” Yikes. Katani realized that saying her thoughts out loud was even stressing
her
out! Poor Mr. Moore.

Her good-natured teacher just laughed, however, and reached into the lower drawer of his cow-decorated desk.
“Okay, here we go—my secret stash of books. I think you're on the right track here, Katani. And don't worry. Besides solar, there are plenty of other kinds of alternate energy—energy that doesn't come from people burning fossil fuels like coal and oil. Why don't you browse through these and see what you can find? Then come back to me if you have questions, okay?”

“Thanks!” Katani said. She had no idea where to begin with the heavy textbooks. She dropped them on a desk and took a seat. The pile of books was so high, it towered over her head. This was not going to be easy. She took a deep breath, and was getting ready to dive in, when—

“Yo, what's up Mr. M?”

Katani peeked up from over the books. “Oh, pleeease!” she groaned under her breath. It was Reggie DeWitt. Katani shrank back behind the books and pretended not to notice him.

“So I've been making mad progress on ideas for my fair project,” Reggie gloated, glancing over at Katani to make sure she heard him, “and I just wanted to shoot some of my thought waves by you. After all, you are the science whiz of AAJH!”

Katani wanted to disappear. Whatever he was trying to pull with this new “super fly” persona, Reggie was still a total geek! He and Betsy Fitzgerald would really make a great match, she thought. Well, except that if you didn't know any better, you'd think that Reggie was a rap superstar by the way he was dressed. Betsy was far from rap superstar style.

“You kids are too much!” remarked Mr. Moore. “Katani here came to me for the same thing.”

Katani peered out from behind the books and gave Reggie a dry smile.

“K-Summers…no way,” Reggie said with a chuckle. “I shoulda known I'd find you here. Well, you know what they say—great minds think alike.”

Katani rolled her eyes. Was that his own back-handed way of calling
himself
a genius?

“But wait,” Reggie said, “I thought you didn't know what you were going to do yet, Katani? I mean, isn't that what you said at lunch?”

“For your information, Reggie, it just so happens—”

“I gave her some books from my treasure chest to help jump-start her creativity,” Mr. Moore explained.

Katani really wished the tiles in the floor would open up and swallow her whole.
Thanks a lot, Mr. Moore,
she thought to herself.

“MOOooo…MOOooo…MOOooo!” went the cell phone on Mr. Moore's desk.

Mr. Moore laughed. “Oops. Hold on guys, it's my wife. Reggie…um, I'll be with you in a sec,” Mr. Moore promised, flipping open his phone and wandering into the hallway. “Hello, muffin!”

Katani watched Reggie strut sickeningly over to her desk. He pushed the books aside and gave Katani a wide smile from ear to ear. “Soooo…any thoughts?”

Katani shot him a death stare. “MYOB, Reggie.”

“Hey, hey, hey, now. Take it easy. I'm just trying to help.” He took the Joe Dude sunglasses from his forehead and pushed them onto his nose. “Is it hot in here, or is it just me?”

That was just
too
much. Who did he think he was? “As much as I appreciate your,” Katani crunched her fingers into two quotation marks, “help, I think I can handle this project perfectly well on my own, thank you
very
much. Besides, my dad's an electrician, so any questions I have, I'll probably just take to him…. After all, he
is
a professional.”

“Well, let's just see what you got.” Reggie pushed his sunglasses back up, walked behind Katani, and leaned in way too close over her shoulder to read her notes. “Build your own electric car…Hey, I did something like that back in fifth grade!”

Katani slammed her notebook shut. “That's it! No way you're reading my notes, Reggie.”

Reggie laughed. “What, do you think I'm going to copy you? Katani, I'm already halfway done with plans for my whole project. Trust me, I
don't
need to copy
you
.” He leaned in again and tried to pry the notebook open. His face was so close to Katani's she could smell his lotion. She felt her cheeks grow warm, and with all her might, grabbed the notebook from his hands. Reggie lost his balance and nearly knocked over a tray of test tubes on the lab table behind him.

“Oh, Reggie,” she gasped. She hadn't meant to knock him over.

“Sheesh, Katani,” he said as he struggled to regain his balance. Then he seemed to remember that he was supposed to be Mr. Cool. “I mean, uh…yo, Katani! I'm just…uh…joking with you, girl.”

“Yeah, well, sometimes people don't like to be joked with!” Katani huffed. “Especially when they are trying to work!” She felt her voice cracking. She was mad at Reggie,
but even more mad at herself for getting so upset. Reggie was telling the truth…he hadn't really done anything at all. But the more he stood there wearing his dumb sunglasses and his puffy, black sneakers looking like he thought he was just some kind of gift to mankind…the more frustrated she felt herself becoming. Just because he was smart, and a whiz at math, and so adorable…. Katani gasped, suddenly realizing the thought that had just crossed her mind.
Adorable? Who am I, Maeve??

“What's bugging you, Kgirl?” Reggie asked.

“Nothing!” Katani snapped, then took a breath and composed herself. In a calmer voice she tried again. “I mean, nothing. Sorry, I'm just a little stressed over this project thing. Sorry to be such a…”

Reggie gave her a half smile. “Maniac?”

Katani grinned. “Yeah. Or something. I gotta run, Reggie…my friends are waiting. Tell Mr. Moore I'm borrowing the book with the red cover, okay?” She shoved the book in her backpack and took off out the door. But on the way out, she felt something holding her shoe to the floor.

“Oh, please!” Katani moaned, yanking her foot up off the floor. “Enough with this Tru Blu stupidity already!”

“Hey, Katani, you forgot your…,” Reggie hollered behind her, but she was long gone. “Scarf,” he mumbled, placing the yellow fabric in his duffel.